Lord Jesus Christ, Be Present Now

Lord Jesus Christ, be present now; our hearts in true devotion bow.  Your Spirit send with light divine, and let your truth within us shine.

Unseal our lips to sing your praise in endless hymns through all our days; increase our faith and light our minds; and set us free from doubt that blinds.

Then shall we join the hosts that cry, “O holy, holy Lord Most High!”  And in the light of that blest place we then shall see you face to face.

All glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three in One!  To you, O blessed Trinity, be praise throughout eternity!

Text attributed to Willhelm II, 1598-1662; translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1827-1878.

This hymn, ELW 527, brings to mind questions about learning ways to be flexible with our liturgy.  Can we learn this hymn, by singing it often and in the prominent place as Gathering Hymn, so that it becomes familiar, almost to the point of memorization?  Can we then spring from this comfortable position of familiarity to the point of intentionally using this hymn as the sole member of the Gathering rite? 

The text for this hymn is wonderfully revelatory in a rather concise way.  It describes our prayers for what we hope to happen in our worship, proclaims to whom we are praying, and sings our praise to the Holy Trinity.  This hymn “does” in two minutes what we often do in the ten minute medley of Gathering Hymn, Kyrie, and Canticle of Praise. 

All too often at First Lutheran, we encounter a conflict on Sunday morning.  The conflict centers around our intention to be faithful to form, which butts against our need to be mindful of the passage of time.  Our desire to be faithful to “the liturgy,” (in this sense the received tradition of worship services past,) sometimes causes us to retain portions of “the liturgy,” (in this sense the order described by the rubrics) that aren’t necessary to our worship on that particular day, but omit portions of the liturgy that we really must do every time we gather. 

I experience an inner anguish every time we omit the Great Thanksgiving because the clock is running out, while mindful that our service that morning has included a ten-minute gathering rite that incorporates a five stanza processional hymn, a Kyrie, and a canticle of praise.  In our worship planning, can we anticipate and identify what demands upon time will be present on a given morning, and then be intentional about how we “fill” the vessel of our liturgy?  Can we do so while conveying to the assembly that we aren’t simply omitting important portions of the liturgy, but using texts, anthems, psalms or other songs that also achieve what we intend? 

Hospitality and liturgical tradition

First Lutheran Church is a liturgical church.  Our members, those who have been attending for many years and those who have joined recently, expect and yearn for the liturgy, in its centuries-old historical form, to be done well and with integrity. 

Scan our congregation and see the people who are faithful pillars of our church, whether having attended for five weeks, five years, or five decades, and witness a testimony to the strength of our worship.  We need to have confidence that what we do every Sunday is attractive and hospitable to any guests that enter our nave with us. 

We must be confident that in our worship we are encountering God, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, “in Word, water, bread and wine” to “serve our community and the world.”  We must be confident that in our worship, our guests and our neighbors will experience that encounter as well, by witnessing and participating in the actions we do. 

Our confidence should be inviting.  Frank Senn asks in his book New Creation this question:  “What is the witness of the worshiping community to visitors?”  He continues with this observation:

“Do the people join in the liturgy, making the responses in a way that seems second nature to them and singing the songs with enthusiasm?  Augustine testified that the sight of the people at worship and the vigor of their singing was a powerful factor in his own conversion. 

“There’s a sense in which nothing is more hospitable than a congregation that knows its liturgy well and does it with a lack of self-consciousness that says:  this is as natural to us as life itself.  This is our life before God.”  (New Creation, 113)

As hosts, we do well to celebrate our liturgy with joy and confidence.  We must learn and practice the parts we have as participants in corporate worship, so that we can be evangelists through our actions. 

At least two corollaries emerge.  First, we must be willing to provide means to teach our liturgy, both to members and guests.  This includes teaching by the example of how we worship and also teaching by means of time spent outside of worship studying texts, music and history.  Second, we can learn to welcome our guests through personal interaction.  Our gestures of hospitality can include personally inviting a guest to sit nearby, or showing where in the hymnal a hymn is found, or simply saying “Welcome, and ask me if there’s anything you’d like to know.”  These sort of personal gestures are nothing less than what we do when guests arrive at our houses.  We can practice them at church as well!

What goes around comes around?

I haven't posted at all in the past two weeks.  I'm on the end of three weekends of weddings and travels to different cities.  Curiously, as far as the search for a common ecumenical liturgy is concerned, the American wedding ceremony may be the most familiar and predictable liturgical rite understandable to the greatest cross section of worshipers!  Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Evangelical - all follow a very predictable pattern. 

The next week ahead promises rejuvenation in the activity of backpacking.  I suggest Psalm 104 as backpacker's meditation. 

To remain true to my commitment to remain in communication regarding sabbatical activities, here are some tidbits from Frank Senn's "The People's Work" to contemplate.  I marvel at the similarities of vexations facing church leaders in centuries past to those in our time. 


After the Roman empire recognized Christianity, Sunday as a day of rest was promoted by the governing authorities throughout the Roman empire.  Secular distractions abounded.  Senn writes:

"The church did no ask for this legislation in their own theological reflections on the Lord's Day.  They continued to stress the need to assemble for worship on the Lord's Day.  But the new idleness on Sunday meant that Christians had to be occupied in edifying ways so they would not succumb to vice. 

In particular, Christians had to be urged to assemble for worship and not to assemble with the crowds that attended the circuses, theater, and games that were held on Sundays. . . . Major sports events, in the form of contests between men and beasts, gladiatorial combat, and chariot races, also were condemned by the bishops.  They remained a problem for Sunday worship attendance in the fourth century."  (Senn, 65)

Vikings?  Nascar?  Tickets to the Guthrie?  All modern day concerns for pastors and musicians planning Sunday morning worship that must be finished by "kick-off." 

The consternation over musical style and instrumentation was not stranger to the church patriarchs, either.  The issue is establishing a Christian identity that remains distinct from the secular culture.  "The increasingly strident denunciation of instrumental music in the writings of the church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries suggests that instruments were, in fact, being used in public worship, or that there was popular pressure to use them, and that this had to be discouraged precisely at a time when a stark contrast was being drawn between Christian and pagan cults.

"In contast with the use of "lifeless" instruments in pagan rituals . . . the church fathers preferred the "living" instrument of the human voice.  Writers as diverse as Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Pachomius, John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo extol unison singing as a powerful witness to unity. . . . The fathers also criticized the lewdness that accompanied pagan instrumental music and dancing.  Thus, the condemnation of the use of musical instruments by the church fathers was not an aesthetic criticism, but a matter of staking out Christian identity and morality."  (Senn 119)

Similar arguments are raised today regarding the appropriateness of electric guitars and such, with an appeal to maintaining a distinction between the commercial pop culture and immoral behavior of the musicians being emulated.  I'm not arguing one way or the other here; I'm just curiously observing the similarity of the problem. 

Last, on the rise of the professional musical class, of which I am definitely a part, and on the desire to get all worshipers singing:

"The Constantinian Age was also the time when hymnody, or spiritual songs, also flourished.  The strophic hymn, which originated in Syria, countered the professionalization of recitative singing in larger assembly halls by making it possible for the people to sing. (My italics.)  Ephriam is credited with developing a type of strophic hymn in which quantitative verse was replaced by isosyllabic verse, in which there was a regular pattern of accented syllables and the endings of lines often rhymed.  This made possible singing all the stanzas to the same melody. (My italics; note in other posts my problem with pop influenced music that has no pattern or predictability, and thus are difficult to sing together.)

Worship 10 July 2011

This report is the letter that I sent to two of the leaders of the congregation I attended this Sunday.  Chad

Dear Pam and Lauren,

I attended worship at ECLC last Sunday, July 10, and want to express my gratitude and appreciation for the welcome your congregation extended to me. 

I did talk with both of you, but to refresh your memory, I am currently on sabbatical from my position as Director of Music at First Lutheran Church in Saint Peter.  As part of my sabbatical, I am visiting a number of churches, of a variety of sizes and liturgical approaches, to glean wisdom for the way we worship at FLC. Among the many questions, two in particular that I am contemplating are “How does a congregation extend its welcome to guests” and “What is the role and value of long-standing liturgical orders in worship.”  I learned much while attending ECLC. 

First, I offer thanks to all of your congregational members who recognized that I was a guest and then engaged me in conversation.  Although this particular Sunday was an unusual one, in terms of worship pattern, I felt (mostly) comfortable joining in the “Head, Heart and Hands” activities following the sermon.  Perhaps the greatest value of the break in the middle of the service for me as a guest was that there was time for engagement with members of your community.  I planted some flowers, got to know a couple of folks, and then felt a greater connection with the people present at communion.  Lauren was gracious to talk a little bit about the Bonfire service, and offer even further assistance as our own congregation at FLC contemplates a similar type of service.  Last, one member, whose name escapes me, made sure to converse with me following worship and offered me a visitor’s packet. 

Second, although I did hear somewhat of an apologetic tone about the style of worship from those I talked with, I truly appreciated the sense of flexibility of the service and the intimacy of the breakout session.  Pam mentioned in her sermon how the parables of Jesus don’t always have to invite linear thinking (that is an analytical view,) but rather some revelation might come from an experiential approach.  To be honest, I can spend most of my time comfortably doing linear analysis, so the thought of the breakout sessions made me sweat a bit.  But, afterwards, the experience enriched my time of worship and made the mission aspect of the gospel more tangible. 

Last, I have been finding as I visit various churches that the most satisfying encounters are with those congregations that authentically engender in their worship a sense of their mission, their life together, and what they hold dear.  After this Sunday morning’s visit, I can describe with some clarity your community’s mission and the way you live out the gospel.  That you are a peace church and a welcoming church is ever so clear.  I have also found that my experience as a guest is more fulfilling when a common liturgical order is present.  The style of the music and the exact content of the service can vary, but I still can find depth within the worship.  This was the first service in which we all paused for 25 minutes, went out to some activity, and then returned to communion, but all along, I knew what was coming.  And, the music was marvelous.  I love singing a cappella, and I appreciated the care and guidance the music leaders expressed while teaching songs that might deviate a bit from what is on the page. 

I hope that I will visit you again, likely on a Wednesday evening, and that your new Bonfire worship is a marvelous experience. 

Chad

Worship 3 July 2011

First, a caveat:  As a worship leader who has planned a service for and participated in one over a holiday weekend, I know that these holiday services are not representative of the norm.  Attendance is low, resources are limited, and even the energy of the staff is diverted by other plans.

If pattern and familiarity are what I desire foremost in worship, then this service fit like a pair of old blue jeans.  We gathered in a beautiful, architecturally significant building on a warm summer morning for worship in a style and order that I have known for over 30 years. 

The musical leadership, by organist alone, was excellent.  The small assembly sang with fair energy a pack of traditional hymns.  The liturgical setting for the morning was ELW 3, the Hillert setting I have known since 1978.  The sermon, as best as I could follow it (my girls were somewhat antsy) was engaging.  The greeters at the entrance to the nave were friendly, and during the service offered help as best as they could (I needed help locating children’s bulletins, which weren’t available, and finding a drinking fountain.)  We were welcome at communion, and the pastor was very attentive to my girls at distribution, offering them the bread by kneeling down to their level.  After the service, conversation with congregational members was lively and extended.  This congregation was genuinely pleased to welcome our presence. 

Perhaps because attendance was low and the service so familiar, I left with some sense of disappointment, as if I had not had my fill of inspiration.  Perhaps I saw too much affinity to my own congregation, or at least, the worship of tried-and-true pattern that sometimes happens when there isn’t time for creativity or attention to all the details.  All the elements of this service were, by liturgical standards, “correct,” yet I was a little impatient or bored with it all. 

The irony is that so much of the reading on liturgy that has engaged me lately argues for the elevation of the objective aspect of worship over the subjective.  Worship should be directed toward God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit.  At least, worship should do more to compel the corporate church body to action than to satisfy personal desires for fulfillment.  Then, why am I now finding a hard time considering this particular worship by no other qualification than by how it made me feel?

What this experience reveals to me is that personal expectations, in this post-Enlightenment era, are part of worship.  This could be cause for great trepidation, because so many individuals come to worship, each bringing some expectation to the table.  How can each one be fulfilled?   Perhaps the answer lies in the mystery of the liturgy that I should be content to leave alone. 

This sabbatical, the services I have attended that have been the most engaging or satisfying are those that really project the authentic nature of the gathered congregation.  No matter what, I am always a guest, and have found adherence to liturgical patterns to be the best welcoming gesture.  But, there are other elements that provide a clue as to what each congregation is about.  Perhaps these are the elements that give satisfaction to that unique, individual congregation, even when something doesn’t seem right to me. 

Postscript:  A couple of pragmatic notes for future reference. 

Gathering Music.  I remember nothing about the gathering music at this service, but I do remember plenty about the extended introduction to the gathering hymn.  The hymn, “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” was preceded by an (improvised?) introduction that suggested in itself the awakening and gathered joy described by the hymn text.  This is something to contemplate, regarding the function of gathering music, since in this case, it was the music within the service that actually established the spirit of the morning. 

Children’s Activity Bags.  I keep sensing something very incongruent when my kids are kept occupied during worship through the offerings of coloring books featuring Disney Princesses or Transformers, or other items absolutely unrelated to worship.  This is simply a distraction from worship, which if we trust ourselves, can be constantly engaging for a child.  (I’ll admit, the sermon is a potential space for boredom; but, why not some other creative option than Disney?)   I find myself annoyed that I don’t expect my kids to stand up for the hymns (because they are too busy coloring) or that they are not learning the common prayers and responses. 

Organic worship

My thoughts this morning stray toward the notion of "what is organic to a congregation?"  In particular, what musical possibilities arise from the congregation itself?  What are the talents and contributions made possible by the people who gather?  If someone were to propose that First Lutheran should have a electric guitar driven praise band, I would have to ask, "Where are the guitarists?"  We are a congregation blessed with singers, percussionists, string players, and countless other talented people who can contribute to worship in many ways, but we are not a community full of garage band types.  However, if a congregation does have such talents, the liturgy of worship could certainly involve such gifts. 

This line of thinking ignores entirely arguments about asthetics or the connection of pop-style music to a commercial music industry or the call for the church to be "in" the world but not "of" the world.  But, that's not what I'm thinking about today.

Living Liturgy: Question for the day

My question for the day arises from a section I read in Frank Senn's book The People's Work.  He writes: 

"Liturgy has been used to promote confessional identity because liturgy encodes meaning.  For this meaning to be communicated, liturgy must be performed.  This seems like a simple and obvious thing to say, but it should not be taken for granted, especially in our own secular age, when the temptation is to lose confidence in the liturgy because it no longer seems to be meaningful to people.  But we should consider the alternative.  We have records or descriptions of the rites performed in ancient Ur or Thebes.  They possess only an antiquarian or anthropological interest, because they are no longer performed.  They are liturgies of the dead.  Liturgies are living when people inject their own living bodies into performing them.  Liturgies must be done in order to be real." (My italics.)

My question for today is this:  For the people at First Lutheran, what should be the character of the liturgy we perform (a living liturgy), if it promotes and demonstrates our confessional identity?  What actions do we want to emphasize, or project, that allow us to remember and live out our mission statement and some of the unwritten corollaries? (For example, our commitment to "green" living, or our commitment to welcoming all?)